The Hardest Part
by Miss Peg
Summary: Cho receives a phone call from Summer which changes his life forever. No, it's not a baby! Sorry Cho/Summer/baby fans.


**The Hardest Part**

**Author**: miss_peg

**Artist**: branquignole

**Word Count: **4018

**Rating:** T

**Summary: **Cho receives a phone call from Summer which changes his life forever. (No, it's not a baby! Sorry Cho/Summer/baby fans.)

**Disclaimer:** I don't own The Mentalist, I just wish I could write for them.

**Notes:** No real spoilers but contains a character from season 4! Written for The Mentalist Reverse Big Bang. Link to the artwork created by branquignole in my profile (image created by them).

A ringing cell phone pulled him from his slumber, Cho rolled over, glancing at the clock as he reached for the phone. He was due into work in just two hours; they were in the middle of a particularly testing case, lack of sleep was the last thing he needed.

'Kimball.'

It took a moment for him to recognise the voice on the other end of the phone. His heart raced in his chest and he lay back down on the bed. Work slipped from his conscious and he swallowed a lump resting painfully in his throat.

'Summer?'

She breathed heavily as though each intake took more than its fair share of her energy. He waited, listening to the shaky sobs that she tried her best to hide.

'Kimball, I need your help.'

x

On the way to the car, Cho dialled Lisbon's number. He knew she'd be working already. He informed her of his need for personal time, evaded as many of her questions as possible until she sanctioned the request. If he set off now, he'd be there before nightfall. He didn't intend to stop for anything, not when all he could think about was the pained sound in Summer's voice as she told him to come see her.

x

Summer curled up in her bed, the covers wrapped tightly around her shoulders. She closed her eyes but all she could see was her father's face staring at her, motionless. She fought back the tears but after several long minutes she could no longer hold back the flood. She'd cried for him too many times already, she didn't want to hand her emotions to him on a plate.

She couldn't help it. It was different this time. The feeling that washed over her was not that of fear, but relief. A weight had fallen off her shoulders the second that blade had pierced his skin.

If someone had told her at sixteen that she'd have the ability to kill her father, she'd have been loathed to believe it. She didn't mean to do it, it wasn't something she planned. The satisfaction, however, of watching him bleed, begging for her mercy, far outweighed the fear of getting caught.

Until he stopped breathing, his eyes losing the sparkle she remembered with such a chill, and she was faced with a body in the middle of her kitchen.

Calling Kimball had been the hardest part.

x

'Thanks for coming,' Summer said, her voice small and weak as she pulled the door open completely. Her arms found Cho's and she sunk into his embrace.

He took a step back, his expression frosty. 'What's wrong?'

'I've missed you,' she said, ignoring his question and pressing her lips against his. He responded briefly, then pushed her away from him. He stared harder now, the stoicism she loved and hated in equal measure.

'Summer, what's wrong?'

'Let's catch up, then I'll tell you everything.'

He watched her carefully, his eyes sunk low as he analysed her expression. She attempted to keep her smile large but knew her eyes would deceive her as they always did. He cupped her face, searching for answers she wasn't willing to give.

'Okay.'

He smiled briefly and she flung her arms around his shoulders, kissing him deeply. He responded, his lips following her lead as they stumbled towards the bedroom. Summer pushed him down on the bed, running her hands underneath his shirt before pulling it off his broad shoulders. She kissed and touched his muscles, carefully remembering every ridge as she retraced previous steps.

'I've missed you,' she repeated, moving to his lips and allowing his strong arms to turn her around, taking back the control. She liked it when he did that. He undressed her slowly, his eyes barely moving from her own as she stared up into his soul.

The walls around her fragile interior crumbled until he frowned and pulled away, stroking the small of her back. She straddled him, adamant she would get her own way. But he grasped her wrists and shook his head when she reached for his belt buckle.

'What are you hiding from?'

How could she tell him? She glanced down at his chest, closing her eyes though she could still feel him staring at her. He wasn't willing to give up, he never was. When she asked him to leave her be, he always kept going until she was forced to relay everything. If it was anyone else, she would have hated it.

'I killed someone.'

Cho frowned, the crease lines on his forehead deepening. She tried to look away but he held her face straight. His nose caught the air and his eyes widened; he looked to her for confirmation.

'Where?'

'In the kitchen.'

x

The man's body lay in the centre of the room, crumpled up around a bleeding injury to his stomach. A large kitchen knife lay on the floor beside him, covered in the same blood that oozed out of the wound and across the linoleum.

'Summer,' Cho said, words catching in his throat until he could barely breathe. What had she done?

She crumbled to the ground beside him and he knelt to catch her, her face ashen as though seeing the body for the very first time. It took a moment for her to start shaking and Cho wrapped her up in his arms tightly, desperate to comfort her. He tried his best to ignore the slowly decaying body yards from where they sat.

Cho knew he should put his CBI hat on, regardless of having no jurisdiction in Seattle, he was still an officer of the law and not acting now would go against everything he had signed up for. He couldn't move. His arms heavy with the weight of the girl he loved. He reminded himself of the reasons she moved away from Sacramento, away from him, but none of it mattered in that moment. He'd missed her as much as she'd missed him, he was sure of that.

When the crying stopped and Summer found enough energy to push up off the floor and stare at the body, Cho stood beside her and reached out his arms. He rested them on her hips as her bottom lip quivered.

'What happened?' he asked, trying to maintain his friendliness despite stumbling back into his professional role.

'I, I don't remember,' she said, her voice tiny as she shook her head.

'Yes, you do,' he replied, moving his hands to her shoulders and holding her steady. He stared into her eyes, waiting for her to tell him everything. She didn't speak. 'Who is he?'

'My father.'

'Why did you do this?'

The tone in his voice felt harsh, despite using it on numerous criminals it seemed too harsh for someone he loved. He cupped Summer's face in his hands and forced her to look at him, to stare back into his eyes until she closed hers and started talking.

'I had to stop him.'

'Stop him from what?'

She shook her head again, masking the trembling of her whole body. He considered what happened in her life; she'd moved to Sacramento as a teenager, alone, she had to have been escaping something. _Someone_.

Cho took a deep breath, glancing at the body before turning back to Summer. 'What did he do to you?'

'Nothing,' she cried, evading Cho's gaze.

'But he has, in the past?'

The brief nod of her head was enough for him to realise what had happened. He'd seen it before with many victims of crime. Women who had been on the street, prostitutes, drug whores, they all came from the same world. A childhood of abuse, probably sexual. Eventually snapping and killing the perpetrator. He didn't know why he'd never thought about it before, Summer allowed men to treat her like a punching bag. It was the first sign and he hadn't even considered it.

She'd allowed him to push her down and still came back for more. The only thing stopping her was him. He couldn't be that man. No matter how much of an accident it had been, he didn't want to be the man who hit his girl.

'I can't do this,' he said, walking out of the room. She called after him but he ignored her, not stopping until he'd closed the front door behind him and his feet had hit the concrete street.

x

She sat alone on the kitchen floor, a ghost of her former self sat there just twenty four hours earlier, after the incident which had changed everything. The smell of his blood lingered in the air and Summer's stomach heaved. She fought hard to keep herself from vomiting. She stared at the body with quivering lips, her eyes dripping with fresh tears.

'I'm sorry,' she cried out to the door, to the place where Kimball had been minutes before he walked out. She shouldn't have asked him to come, it wasn't fair on him and now he was gone; probably for the last time. She wouldn't want to see her either if she'd put herself in the same position.

x

Cho sat in the car for a long time; at least it felt like a long time. He wasn't sure how much time passed until his cell phone rang, pulling him from his reverie. The last few minutes had drifted by like a calm river on a summer's day, barely moving as time ticked by at a snail's pace. He couldn't bear the thought of going back inside that house without the local police department on hand and yet considering he'd abandoned Summer there, alone, with the mess that she'd created. It was even more unbearable.

The phone continued to ring, Lisbon's name printed across the screen. It took all his strength not to answer it and tell her everything he knew.

What did Summer want him to do? When she'd called him, what was she expecting? For him to cover up the crime? Take the rap? Whatever she expected, he probably couldn't deliver, nor should she assume he would. It hurt that she had put him in that situation without much thought for his career, for his future.

Though she probably hadn't been thinking much about anything. She had shaken and cried almost repeatedly, he had held her through it and he knew as he had seen many other broken women before, that she was no different to any of them.

Except that she was. She was his, his Summer, the girl he wished he could be with. He hadn't anticipated being so happy with somebody so different to himself, who would? She was on the opposite side of the law, she was wrong for him on so many levels and yet being with her felt right.

When he'd been with Elise it made sense, they came from the same world, the same culture and they'd worked well together. She was intelligent and witty, she brought him joy and like Summer, she had made him smile frequently. He knew people saw him as a drip, someone who didn't crack jokes and showed no sense of humour. Sometimes he hated that judgement because it wasn't that he didn't find things funny, he simply conserved moments of bliss for the people and moments that really mattered. It took a lot for someone to make him crack a smile. If someone could do it in days, weeks even, then they were someone he needed in his life.

He used to think so any way.

Until he'd discovered Summer in the bathroom of her home beaten to a pulp after stealing someone's drugs. He hated what he turned into. He hated being the person who felt out of control. It's why he had to let her go.

The only reason he was there, sitting outside her home, was because she had called him. He might have removed her from his life but that didn't mean he'd forgotten about her. She meant more to him than that, it mattered more that he protect her in spite of who she was. He needed to look after her and she needed someone to want to do that.

He wished her a better life at community college, studying hairdressing or business or whatever she chose to do. She said she was happy, in the brief contact they'd shared after she left Sacramento. He thought she was doing well. She doted on her nephews, her sister was happy to hear from her.

So why was she in her house cowering over the dead body of her father? What had gone so painfully wrong?

He couldn't sit out there any longer. No matter how difficult it was to be there with her, even if the next few hours resulted in him cleaning up blood, he had to find out what happened. For Summer and for himself.

His job meant a lot to him, but Summer meant more.

x

The front door slammed against the wall as it opened. Summer lifted her gaze from the body in the kitchen and pushed herself up from the linoleum to see what had happened. She hoped it was Kimball, there was no one other than him she wished it would be and yet she feared who else might grace her with their presence. The police, a druggie she'd escaped by moving to Seattle. There were any number of men she'd anger on the streets. She loathed the life she had lead, it wasn't her fault that she had been left with few chances but the one chance she had to make a better life for herself and this was where she ended up?

She watched Kimball as he stood in the doorway, his face pale with the fears and worries she knew he was feeling. She didn't want him to be in this position as much as he, but there was little she could do now to change what had happened. She couldn't change her mind about calling him. She'd done it merely because he was the only person she felt one hundred per cent safe with, the one person she knew she could count on to help her, even if all he did was assist her in calling the police. What was done had been done and she was slowly growing used to that fact, as much as any one person can after barely a day.

Cho's eyebrows fell at the sides and he scooped her up into his arms. Summer wrapped her fingers tightly together around his shoulders, revelling in the warmth of his embrace. She cupped his face and kissed him softly. What happened next didn't matter; it was now, this moment that meant the world to her. He could ship her off to the cop shop in his own pair of handcuffs and she would go willingly, as long as he was by her side.

'I'm sorry,' she said, wiping a couple of stray tears from her eyes. He didn't say anything, ever the silent man in times of great distress, but it didn't bother her. His silence spoke the miles she couldn't handle.

'We'll fix this.'

She nodded her head, stroking the soft skin of his cheeks, his beautiful cheeks. When had she become so lucky? Why hadn't she grasped hold of it and never let it go? If she had, then maybe this wouldn't have happened and they wouldn't be faced with the worst future imaginable.

'How Kimball? I killed him.'

'I'm not sure yet, but we'll find a way.'

He held her close, pulling her against his chest. She breathed in the sweet smell of sweat mixed with cologne, a scent so familiar and yet extraordinary. She clung to him again, desperate to be a part of him for as long as feasibly possible.

'We have to go to the police,' she said, lowering her gaze as she spoke the truth that she knew was coming.

He didn't speak, merely stared at her, looking deep into her eyes until she turned away. There was fear and dread, mixed with hope and excitement, all emotions she didn't want to be privy to. She couldn't understand what was going through his mind, nor did she really want to. He was her tower of strength. But he was a cop, first and foremost; his desire for justice far outweighed anything he had ever done in his life.

'No,' he muttered, shaking his head.

The words stunned her, pushed her backwards until several feet separated them. What was he saying? She couldn't be too sure and yet all of the possibilities left her elated and frightened all at once.

'But I killed him, we can't escape this.'

'You can.'

'No, Kimball.'

The reality of what he was suggesting hit her hard in the chest. He was trying to protect her. Despite her newfound independence and need for her own womanhood to stand before anything else, she was left with a need to be looked after. He wanted to take care of her and for the first time since she was a child, she wanted a man to take that role from her.

'I can't let you take the rap for me, Kimball.'

'What other option is there? You can't get found out, you'll go to jail.'

'_You_ will go to jail,' she said, shaking her head. 'You'll get killed if you go inside, you're a cop; you know it's worse.'

'What else can I do to keep you safe?'

'I don't know.'

x

In truth, he didn't want to go to jail as much as he didn't want Summer to, but his heart ruled his head. He didn't think it possible to lose sense of reality and justice all because he loved someone and yet there he was, announcing his intention to take the punishment for a crime he didn't even commit.

'I don't want you to go to jail,' he said, holding her at arm's length, desperate to keep her safe.

'Then we could leave.'

He took a step back and frowned. Everything he had ever learnt in his time in law enforcement was pushed to one side as he considered the possibility. He had once left a man to die on the side of a road, back in his days with the Playboys. He'd driven the car that sped through the neighbouring hood, watched his fellow gang member roll down the window and fire his gun at a group playing basketball. His sense told him to keep driving, though his heart told him to stop, to call 911 and save lives. He wasn't a criminal, despite what he did in his youth, he wasn't built for a life of crime.

At the time he'd watched one of his friends leave town without much warning, his only chance for freedom after the police nearly caught him dealing drugs. He didn't want that life for himself, so he moved on, joined the military and changed his world from crime to justice.

The last thing he expected was to end up back where he started from, straddling the line between right and wrong. He wasn't the cause of Summer's father's death, he had no role in the crime except keeping it from the police. He had a duty to report a crime, in that moment he thought of nothing worse than shopping the girl he loved to the state. Regardless of whether they could prove self-defence or other mitigating circumstances, Summer would probably go to jail, if not for homicide, for something equally longstanding.

If they found out that he'd kept the truth from them then he was likely to be convicted. He had no jurisdiction in Washington, no one to look out for him and fight his corner. Whether the crime was serious or not, he would probably lose his position in the CBI. He'd never work in law enforcement again. There was little option to get out of this without charge and even if he did, Summer would still be going to jail.

He nodded his head. 'Okay, pack a bag and we'll be out of here as soon as it goes dark.'

x

Whilst Summer packed a bag she listened to the grunts and groans as Kimball wrapped the body in a blanket and carried it towards the door. She didn't like the plan. Leaving the country in order to stay together was the only positive, but driving the body across the state into Montana so that they could dump it in a river? She didn't like the risk they were taking. If they left the body in the house, surely it would be days before anyone found it.

'It has to be this way; if we don't put it in a river then we won't buy ourselves enough time to settle someplace else.'

He was right, he was always right. He had the firm head on strong shoulders and she trusted him with every fibre of her being. Kimball was going to keep her safe, as he had promised.

'What about the knife?'

The last thing she wanted was for someone to walk into the house and discover the weapon on the floor and the pool of blood. Kimball explained his intention to clean the kitchen and take the knife with them. If they took the knife to another city, dropped it in a dumpster somewhere unknown and as far away from the body as possible, then nobody would ever link the two. One day the body would be found, perhaps only a few hours from when it was dumped, but at least nobody could connect the dots and figure out her part in his death. It would be days before they even got a positive ID.

So as soon as the sun set and the neighbourhood turned dark, Summer stumbled down the front steps, holding onto the end of the blanket. They placed the body into the trunk, threw a bag into the back and sped off through the night.

They drove for hours, stopping only once to fill up the gas tank and dump their cell phones. She hadn't wanted to part with it but Kimball told her it was the only way. They had to cut off their old life.

Sometime after four in the morning they reached a river in Montana and tossed the blanket covered body over the railings of a bridge and into the icy depths below. Summer shivered under the night-time breeze and sunk into Kimball's embrace as he wrapped a shoulder around her. They watched the body float down river until it was out of sight, but not quite out of mind.

They continued to drive through the state until morning, when they dumped the car in a parking lot by a 7/11 and walked through the city with the knife in her purse. They placed it in the first fast food dumpster they could find, they would be emptied the most, Kimball had assumed. Summer didn't know but she agreed he was probably right.

'I'm going to the bank,' he said. 'I'll get out as much money as I can.'

'I'll come with you.'

'No.' He thrust a couple of bills into her hands. 'Go to the drugstore, buy anything we need.'

x

An hour after arriving in the city, a place Cho didn't care to remember the name of, they were on their way again. They bought bus tickets to a town a few miles north, bordering with Canada. When they arrived, they walked across the border, putting each foot in front of the other until they'd made it onto Canadian land.

He didn't know what would happen now, part of him didn't care. They were together, safe from the distant crime back in Seattle and his job in Sacramento. A sense a loss beat hard in his heart and he bowed his head for a moment to remember those he was walking away from. Then he turned to Summer, smiled briefly and held her close.


End file.
